CONVERSATE
A memoir of illness, teaching, and the conversations that heal.
This timely memoir details my unexpected battle with breast cancer at the start of the 2019–2020 school year. Terrified by the diagnosis, I find the courage and strength to face my illness from an unlikely source: the students and staff of a tough, gritty, underperforming school, John Glenn High School.
Devastated and exhausted, I begin my last year of teaching and meet Christian, a quiet, serious student who has recently lost his own mother to breast cancer. We form an unusual bond when he pulls a chair up to my desk and we talk much like a mother and son would. Slowly, over the course of the school year and countless conversations, we each help the other to process the grief we carry and to move towards healing.
August 2019. A new school year begins, and with it, news that changes everything. She decides to keep teaching.
Christian, quiet and serious, has just lost his mother to the same illness. He pulls a chair up to her desk, and they talk.
Over countless conversations, teacher and student carry each other through grief, toward healing neither expected.
The book is about the conversations that heal us. The community is where we keep having them. I invite you to share your experience — respond to this month's CONVERSATE prompt.
